Things you should know prior to reading this blog:
1. I am deathly ticklish
2. I hate feet in general and I hate people touching my feet. They are completely off-limits.
3. I embrace the fact that I am the stereotypical "American Prude" by European standards, as far as my (severely negative) comfort level with public nudity is concerned.
4. I am cheap. I obsess over my savings account and will sacrifice a lot of comfort in the name of stretching my dollar (or Euro) a little further.
5. I will do pretty much anything for my husband, including 'taking one for the team' with regard to Numbers 1-4 above.
-----------------------------------
This all started with the innocent question of, "What do you want for your birthday?", which I posed to Scott sometime in early October. We'd already planned to spend our birthday week in Istanbul so I knew we'd both be shooting for the "experience" over "tangible gift" birthday scenario.
Scott wanted to visit a Hamam or Turkish Bath for his birthday. I commend him for his ability to choose such a unique and culturally fitting "experience" for his birthday but I knew as soon as the words left his mouth that this decision was going to severely conflict with Numbers 1-4 from above. I was correct.
After a debate over which of Istanbul's Hamams we would visit, we (I) made the tragic decision that we should save some money and choose the slightly less expensive option, which was located just down the road from our hostel.
We thought we knew in general what to expect out of this. The typical hamam experience includes being wrapped in a towel (and sometimes a bikini top for women) and stretching out on a slab of heated marble in a 14th century bath house. After about a half hour of relaxation, we knew we'd be transferred to a heated floor where water would be poured over us. Next, a staff bather would exfoliate our skin with a fabric cloth and then bathe/massage us. I had done extensive research on this topic, and reviews of the more expensive hamams suggested that the experience was very modest, relaxing, and culturally enriching.
We entered the hamam and after discussing the bath process, the price, and the fact that I am morbidly ticklish, we were rushed into a changing room with the assurance that we would at no point have to be separated. We emerged a few minutes later, wrapped in towels (um, where's the bikini top?) and were ushered into a marble room with domed ceilings.
"You. Lay. Sleep", the bath attendant ordered.
We stretched out on the marble and were just mellowing out when a door swung open and the attendant belted out, "Lady. Come. Now!"
In one fearful, fluid motion I was up off that marble slab and slinking into a separate room. Enter my first "Red Flag" that all was not as expected.
The door slammed shut and I found myself in a smaller domed room with low stone benches and sinks. As I stood reeling from the surprise venue change, the attendant went about setting the water to run in the sinks. Then out of nowhere, she turned to me and "WOOOSH", snatched the towel from around me. Needless to say, that caught me a little offguard and as I debated whether or not to just bolt from the room and run for my life, she spread the towel out and ordered, "Lady! Sit! Water!", before storming out of the room.
There I sat, naked, in a 14th century bath house, pouring water over myself with what looked like a petfood bowl, while the Muslim call to prayer blasted across the city form the mosque next door. I won't ever forget how surreal and strange that moment was. Nor will I forget the awkward moments that followed when the attendant led in two Korean women and produced the same morbid embarrassment in them that she did me with that little towel maneuver. What felt like three eternities later (probably more like 20 mins), the attendant showed up again, this time topless, and pointed to me. "Lady! Come. Now!" At this point, I was up to about five 'Red Flags'.
I ended up on a massage table and the exfoliating process began. Don't let anyone ever try to convince you that this is relaxing. The "fabric cloth" is no more than a brillo pad and was used head-to-toe and nearly made me cry. Next came the soaping and massage, which was not terrible until she got to my feet. When she was finished, she poured several buckets of hot water over my head and shouted, "Lady. Go!" I was wrapped in a dry towel and ushered into the hamam's lobby, where I sipped apple tea and watched a Turkish soap opera with the other bath attendants.
My first clue to the fact that Scott and I had had very different experiences came when I began my second Turkish soap opera and he still hadn't emerged from his side of the bath house. The second was when I saw his attendant emerge. This man was enormous and I knew Scott had probably been given the most severe massage of his life. He finally came out looking content but also looking like he'd just been beaten up. Apparently, his attendant had cracked his neck, back, and shoulder joints, in addition to his signature move of digging his elbows into Scott's sides.
All in all, it was a bizarre and surreal experience. In hindsight, we should perhaps have chosen the slightly more expensive option. However, Scott got what he wanted for his birthday and we now have some funny stories to tell. All in all, I'm glad we had this experience. But, for the record, I chose a very nice Turkish-made bag for my birthday, which did not require me to lose my clothes nor have my feet touched. I'm perfectly content with my birthday gift, too, thankyouverymuch.
Monday, November 29, 2010
"It's Snowing In Camden..."
Guten morgen from snowy Munich. I have lots of blog updating to do but first, I need to say something. Having grown up in Tennessee and having spent seven years on the Gulf Coast, I have an understandably strained relationship with all forms of winter precipitation. Tennessee generally gets very little snowfall but when even the *hint* of potential flurries (muchless accumulation) leaves the Meteorologist's mouth, mass hysteria sets in. In fact, I would wager that the average Tennessean does more to prepare for an inch of snow than I ever did in preparation for a hurricane. Growing up, I can remember grocery stores being literally attacked and stripped of any milk, bread, and egg products. Meanwhile, all of us kids waited anxiously for our white, fluffy ticket to freedom. If ice or snow accumulated, even on the millimeter scale, school was usually called off in the name of "compromised bus safety". Because most weather systems moved in over nearby Camden, TN, just before reaching us, the phrase, "It's snowing in Camden" was enough to start a Junior High-scale riot with all sorts of speculation about when and for how long we'd be out of school. In hindsight, it's just plain hilarious to me, especially since Scott grew up in the northeast and has a much more reasonable attitude toward winter weather. Also because, here in Munich, six inches of snowfall overnight has zero effect on the efficiency of the city or the mood of its people. It is still very much 'business as usual'. Meanwhile, I'm ready to sprint through the streets and hug every person I see. I have seriously reverted back to the six year old version of myself.
All of this came to light this past Friday when Munich got its first true snowfall of the season. While we were both excited to see snow for the first time in a long time, to say that I was like a kid on Christmas morning would be a severe understatement. I was delerious when I opened the door to let the dog out that morning and stepped into a blanket of snow on the patio. I could not be contained and spent an entire workday staring out my office window watching it snow. We got a little break in the flurries on Saturday but the weather forecast indicated it would again start snowing yesterday (Sunday) evening. Thus, as I was cooking dinner last night, the phrase "It's snowing in Camden" suddenly popped into my head. I had a little laugh to myself and went about the evening. Sure enough, though, we woke up to about 6 inches this morning. Despite knowing that a little snowfall is not going to change the fact that I have got to be at work, the inner Tennessean in me can't help but surface. I'll let you all know when the new wears off but for now, I am so excited!!
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Reflections on Turkey, Part 1: Getting there and away
Scott and I are just returning from our much anticipated trip to Istanbul. It was more fabulous and exotic than I could've ever imagined and we've returned home with some stories that we'll surely be sharing with grandchildren one day. I'll start with the adventures of getting there and away, which were experiences that knocked at least 10 years off our lives.
Our flight from Munich to Istanbul was scheduled for mid-afternoon and, after a delay in trains (thanks to the transport strike), a delay in getting the dog to the sitter, and a whole bunch of other issues, we made it to the airport via a $70 taxi ride with no time to spare. I was a ball of nerves already but the fun was just beginning.
Our flight took off on time and we enjoyed incredible aerial views of the Alps as we crossed over Austria and headed East.
I had just settled into my iPod and was dozing off when suddenly I smelled smoke. I second guessed my senses for a couple of minutes before mentioning this to Scott and we soon realized that it was the unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke, which on most flights would get you bum-rushed, tackled to the ground, and subpeonaed to federal court in a split-second. The bizarre thing was that no one else on this 200-passenger flight, including the flight attendants, seemed the least bit concerned about this! Scott really played the situation down to curtail a complete panic attack that was building inside me and eventually the smell faded and I relaxed enough to doze off.
A flight attendant woke me up just prior to landing to ensure that my seat was returned to the "upright position"...because clearly an open flame in the bathroom is no problem but that 2 degree recline on the seat back is a serious safety hazard! As the plane descended, we were enjoying the twinkling lights of the Euro-Asian border and certainly weren't expecting to bounce down the runway like a basketball. But, alas, we did. The back wheels touched down and then the plane jolted forward onto the front wheel and we see-sawed down the runway for a horrifying 15-20 seconds or so. Most of the passengers were on the verge of full-blown panic by the time all three wheels settled onto the tarmac and we began to slow down. The whole plane began cheering and I began plotting a way to hitchhike back to Germany instead of stepping foot onto another Condor/Sun Express flight ever again.
We flew into a regional airport on the Asian side of the city and would have to take a bus from the airport to the ferry dock, then a ferry to the Old City, and then walk to the hostel itself, a route I had written in painstaking detail. We boarded the first bus and were soaking up the hustle and bustle of rush hour traffic in this strange city when..."BOOOOOM" (and when I say "boom", I mean the 'steel crashing into steel at 60 mph' kind of "boom"). Apparently, as our bus was cruising along in the center lane of a 3-lane highway, another city bus had decided to try to squeeze past us in the far right lane. The driver wedged himself between our bus and a huge rock outcrop and gunned it. He scraped the entire length of our bus and never slowed up! The other passengers on the bus just shook their heads and Scott and I sat there in stunned silence wondering what could possibly happen next.
The ferry ride itself was thankfully very uneventful, although don't think for a second that I hadn't done a mental check of the location of life preservers at this point in the trip. We sipped hot tea (a favorite Turkish pastime) and enjoyed crossing the Bosphorus Straits from Asia to Europe.
Once we arrived in the Old Town, I broke out my walking directions and we headed out on foot in search of our hostel. Easier said than done in a city that doesn't believe in street signs. My directions were completely useless and here we stood in the dark, with our packs on, looking obviously lost. We might as well have been waving flags above our heads that said, "We're lost tourists hoping to get mugged tonight!" Luckily, Turks are some of the kindest people I have ever encountered (granted most of them are trying to sell you something, but that's a blog for a different day), and we spent 3 hours snaking our way through the city, asking for directions in local shops, and then walking a few more minutes before asking someone else if we were still continuing in the correct direction. It was tedious and nerve-wracking but we finally found our hostel, which turned out to be in the most perfect location for sightseeing in the city.
We slept like babies that first night and woke to the Muslim call to prayer being broadcast across the city as the sun came up over the Sea of Marmara outside our bedroom window. At that point, I had convinced myself that Istanbul was going to have to be really extraordinary to make up for the chaos we encountered in getting there. No doubt, it made up for it and then some. More to come later, as I am currently nursing my least favorite Turkish souvenir: the flu. Guten Nacht!
Our flight from Munich to Istanbul was scheduled for mid-afternoon and, after a delay in trains (thanks to the transport strike), a delay in getting the dog to the sitter, and a whole bunch of other issues, we made it to the airport via a $70 taxi ride with no time to spare. I was a ball of nerves already but the fun was just beginning.
Our flight took off on time and we enjoyed incredible aerial views of the Alps as we crossed over Austria and headed East.
I had just settled into my iPod and was dozing off when suddenly I smelled smoke. I second guessed my senses for a couple of minutes before mentioning this to Scott and we soon realized that it was the unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke, which on most flights would get you bum-rushed, tackled to the ground, and subpeonaed to federal court in a split-second. The bizarre thing was that no one else on this 200-passenger flight, including the flight attendants, seemed the least bit concerned about this! Scott really played the situation down to curtail a complete panic attack that was building inside me and eventually the smell faded and I relaxed enough to doze off.
A flight attendant woke me up just prior to landing to ensure that my seat was returned to the "upright position"...because clearly an open flame in the bathroom is no problem but that 2 degree recline on the seat back is a serious safety hazard! As the plane descended, we were enjoying the twinkling lights of the Euro-Asian border and certainly weren't expecting to bounce down the runway like a basketball. But, alas, we did. The back wheels touched down and then the plane jolted forward onto the front wheel and we see-sawed down the runway for a horrifying 15-20 seconds or so. Most of the passengers were on the verge of full-blown panic by the time all three wheels settled onto the tarmac and we began to slow down. The whole plane began cheering and I began plotting a way to hitchhike back to Germany instead of stepping foot onto another Condor/Sun Express flight ever again.
We flew into a regional airport on the Asian side of the city and would have to take a bus from the airport to the ferry dock, then a ferry to the Old City, and then walk to the hostel itself, a route I had written in painstaking detail. We boarded the first bus and were soaking up the hustle and bustle of rush hour traffic in this strange city when..."BOOOOOM" (and when I say "boom", I mean the 'steel crashing into steel at 60 mph' kind of "boom"). Apparently, as our bus was cruising along in the center lane of a 3-lane highway, another city bus had decided to try to squeeze past us in the far right lane. The driver wedged himself between our bus and a huge rock outcrop and gunned it. He scraped the entire length of our bus and never slowed up! The other passengers on the bus just shook their heads and Scott and I sat there in stunned silence wondering what could possibly happen next.
The ferry ride itself was thankfully very uneventful, although don't think for a second that I hadn't done a mental check of the location of life preservers at this point in the trip. We sipped hot tea (a favorite Turkish pastime) and enjoyed crossing the Bosphorus Straits from Asia to Europe.
Once we arrived in the Old Town, I broke out my walking directions and we headed out on foot in search of our hostel. Easier said than done in a city that doesn't believe in street signs. My directions were completely useless and here we stood in the dark, with our packs on, looking obviously lost. We might as well have been waving flags above our heads that said, "We're lost tourists hoping to get mugged tonight!" Luckily, Turks are some of the kindest people I have ever encountered (granted most of them are trying to sell you something, but that's a blog for a different day), and we spent 3 hours snaking our way through the city, asking for directions in local shops, and then walking a few more minutes before asking someone else if we were still continuing in the correct direction. It was tedious and nerve-wracking but we finally found our hostel, which turned out to be in the most perfect location for sightseeing in the city.
We slept like babies that first night and woke to the Muslim call to prayer being broadcast across the city as the sun came up over the Sea of Marmara outside our bedroom window. At that point, I had convinced myself that Istanbul was going to have to be really extraordinary to make up for the chaos we encountered in getting there. No doubt, it made up for it and then some. More to come later, as I am currently nursing my least favorite Turkish souvenir: the flu. Guten Nacht!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)